Few things on the Internet giveth and taketh away the way a read receipt does. An immediate read-and-response is immense validation, while a crucial message that has been read but not responded to is emotionally crushing—you can never pretend hard enough like you have better things to do than wait for a reply.

Read receipts are transitioning from a quirky, semi-invasive e-mail option to an always-on feature in messaging services like Facebook, but they aren't always welcome. In many instances, they create a mild, uncomfortable social pressure—just enough to keep you talking a little longer than you might want.

From e-mail to Facebook

Read receipts are the Internet progeny of a much older, snail-mail-based practice known as “return receipts.” Upon delivering a letter or package, the postal worker would return to the sender with a piece of paper verifying the delivery. Effectively, postal workers did double duty as tracking numbers.

That version of read receipts was more like a delivery notification, a concept that made its way into e-mail fairly early on as Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) or Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs). DSNs were the real analogue to return receipts, telling the sender only whether the message had arrived, but the MDNs opened up a host of other options—allowing the sender to see whether the message was opened, for instance, or trashed without ever being looked at.

Read receipts are now permeating more immediate forms of messaging. Apple added iMessage to iOS 5 in 2010, which included read receipts as one of its features, Facebook added “seen” notifications to its messages in the summer of 2012, and Snapchat tells users when their snaps have been opened by the recipient and whether they were screenshotted.

Read receipts can be great. For instance, there was a time in the early days of text messages when it was hard to tell if messages had gone through, or in what order they had arrived, or when they might arrive. Read receipts could help. And, as a Facebook representative highlighted to Ars, they can also obviate the need to respond to some messages; for instance, if your significant other reminds you to pick up some milk, just opening the message creates a mutual understanding between the two of you that if you don’t get milk, it’s only one person’s fault—and only one person is going to run to the convenience store later.

But increasingly, services are turning on read receipts by default or, worse, providing no option for turning them off. iOS offers to turn read receipts on for you during phone setup, while both Facebook and Snapchat enforce always-on read receipts, creating an awkward vacuum when users can see that their messages have been opened and yet the recipient isn’t responding.

The implication of always-on read receipts is that both conversation partners are comfortable with the obligation to respond engendered by a read message. But that level of comfort seems reserved for close relationships; in most other cases, it can create unwanted social pressure.

The cases above are real, but it’s safe to say that most messages are written to be responded to. Therefore, when someone doesn’t respond to your message, it can be a blow to your ego. What was wrong with what you said? Too flip? Too harsh? Too dumb? Too boring? Has the conversation been boring the entire time and you didn’t notice? Have you been bored this entire time but just didn’t have the wherewithal to end the conversation first? Curse that other person for being braver than you and cutting ties first! You are now the hanger-on, just slightly more desperate than before.

And then you try to rationalize by imagining scenarios for your conversation partners. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they were interrupted. Maybe they’re playing hard to get. Maybe they had an emergency. Maybe they’re laughing so hard they fell on the floor and not only can’t reach their keyboards but broke a few ribs. Maybe they’re hurt. Maybe they’re dead! Maybe someone else was on their account and the embarrassment you’re currently suffering will never be known to the person you’re actually talking to. Maybe you wouldn’t talk to you, either.

You might offer a simple “goodbye” or “see you” or “well I have to do X now” as a way to definitively end a conversation online, but that has its own problems. The person who takes off is still inevitably on Facebook, their availability indicator green as ever. Or if you are that person, you might sign off but continue to browse Facebook, living a lie just to avoid a conversation.

Just keep replying

Benign though the intentions of enforced receipts might be, Facebook and similar services cannot be oblivious to the shame trajectory that results from the knowledge that someone has read your message but chosen not to respond. In a messaging medium where everyone knows whether their missives are read, human sympathy dictates that you will feel pressure not to leave a conversation partner hanging—and that leads to more usage of these services.

By forcing read receipts on users, these services provide an extra push to keep returning to your conversations, continuing them no matter how banal they become. Because you can’t be the bad guy. You won’t be the bad guy. So long as you keep talking.

Promoted Comments

I think Apple did the greatest thing in text messaging with the way they're implemented it. All it does it tell you if it was delivered or read with a little line of text and doesn't bug anyone about receipts like I've previously experienced. I thought I had to turn it on myself, but if it's on by default (which I think it should be) you can always turn it off.

I don't use Facebook or Snapchat and neither does anyone else I know for SMS-style messaging.

The fact that I know if someone got my message to pick-up something important while they're in town is far, far more valuable to me than the potential for some BS social awkwardness as the author suggests.

167 posts | registered Oct 18, 2001

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

I have read receipts off on my iPhone, but I have no problem reading and then ignoring someone's message, and it doesn't matter to me if they know about it. All of the forms of communication you mention are by nature asynchronous. I'm not required to spend time concurrently with the other person to use them.

People just need to adjust their expectations. They sent me a message. I got it. I will respond if I want/need to. If I don't, too bad.

I think enterprise/biz/bullying bosses are to blame here. They want a paper trail of blame, and a means to make it obvious who is the busiest, working at all hours. For Apple, this was a requirement for business users they were trying to attract, and for just about everyone else it just permeated back through. That it pushes people to respond more quickly from a social aspect is just a side effect.

Read Receipts are the the best CYA feature a consultant can ask for. Any time we send something high-risk or high-importance to a client, we read receipt it. We ask the client to do the same so we are all on the same page about who has what.

...since when did being the one to stop talking make anyone 'the bad guy' outside of, I dunno, grade school?

Oh common. Everyone knows "that" guy/girl who wants to talk to you but you really just don't give a crap what they have to say. Read receipts just make it that much harder/less socially convenient to ignore them. Sure you can be a dick to just tell them to screw off, but it is putting the onerous on YOU when it's other people who are attempting to initiate the conversion in the first place.

There needs to be an option with any service like this to say "Do not show read receipt." Users should be allowed to opt-out. I do think it would then be acceptable to remove the feature from the opt-outer in total, meaning they don't receive read receipts either, since one-way communication via the feature isn't a great option either.

It's a nice feature to have, as long as both parties are comfortable with it.

I can understand wanting a read receipt to make sure they got the email in the first place, if it's important, but why in the hell would anyone need to know when the message is deleted? It's none of your business when and what I delete from my inbox! grrr...

Maybe so (I am a consultant). But it would never go in my favor regardless. If something hits the fan it is all "ok, let's figure this out and work the problem" If I ever pulled the "I sent you that and here is the read receipt" I'd probably be given a curt "You're right" then never see a scrap of work again. Higher ups may be able to leverage something if there is enough of a trend. But being a consultant is all about remebering the Golden Rule and fixing things. Even when they are certifiably not your fault.

Benign though the intentions of enforced receipts might be, Facebook and similar services cannot be oblivious to the shame trajectory that results from the knowledge that someone has read your message but chosen not to respond.

Yes, and they all equally well know that you can just pick up the phone and actually talk to people, too. Instead, we choose their services for a reason - because it's NOT an analog to an actual phone call or in person face to face. I think the problem is that many people make that choice without thinking it through.

After all, if I leave my iPhone unlocked and set the screensaver to 60 minutes with your txt dialog on, you could text at me all day and it would said received every time. You're the dumbass if you wonder why I'm not responding and your only retort is to txt me more or hold in your angst, not Apple.

I'm a grumpy cat when it comes to meeting requests and iCal attachments, too. Pretty much anything that opens up another application is a potential security risk, including images, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_bug

Talk about nerotic. If you care that much about read receipts there is something very wrong with you.

Neurotic. There, I fixed it for you. Also, read receipts are stupid. I hate them, and with that, I loved this article. The only neurotic people out there are ones who feel that they must use read receipts constantly.

...since when did being the one to stop talking make anyone 'the bad guy' outside of, I dunno, grade school?

Oh common. Everyone knows "that" guy/girl who wants to talk to you but you really just don't give a crap what they have to say. Read receipts just make it that much harder/less socially convenient to ignore them. Sure you can be a dick to just tell them to screw off, but it is putting the onerous on YOU when it's other people who are attempting to initiate the conversion in the first place.

Like I said, grade school.

If you aren't enough of a grown up to be able to do that much, in school or out, you need to take a serious look at your development as a person.

I tend to think that it's the (traditionally) optional nature of read receipts that causes the friction. If it were universal we'd just adapt to it.

It's been said that people had a hard time with the etiquette of answering the phone early on. Figuring out how to handle read receipts is harder when they're not applied consistently. No one would be accused of misusing them if everyone did by default. We'd just reach a consensus on the social norms and treat them accordingly.

I still remember the first time someone tried to call me on a read-receipt message. It was back in the late 90's, and at least the way I had it set up, I could delete a message while it was still listed as unread, yet could see the contents of the message in the reading pane. A coworker sent a short email, I read the whole thing while it was still in the reading pane, and deleted it. 30 seconds later, he calls to complain that I could have at least read the thing before I deleted it. I then repeated what he said in the email exactly, told him how I can read messages in the reading pane without it showing up as "read", and thanked him for checking up on me. He got a little sheepish after that.

To: ArsCC: my boss; your boss; boss's boss; random other manager; random coworker;BCC: HR;Message: I turn read receipts off. I usually forget when I change computers. First time I get a read receipt (which is usually on the first day of using a new system!) I'm reminded how annoying they are and turn them off then.

And the automatic type that Facebook Messenger has is just very annoying. Not just for me as a recipient of a message, where I feel pressured - but also as the sender, where I begin to wonder why I've not yet had a reply.

You have to learn to let go and be sanguine about it. And to just tell people that, quite frankly, you had something more important to do than to reply immediately.

If the person is offended by that, then they're probably not someone you want to be conversing with anyway...

This is just one more thing that people will become acclimated to and socially acceptable guidelines will form organically. Pretty much like when IM first appeared and some people felt pressured to continue talking because they were treating the real time exchange like a phone conversation where you would never just put your phone down for a couple minutes to go to the bathroom and expect the other person to simply be waiting for you when you got back. But IM was largely done while doing other things and people quickly figured out that IM conversations have a start and stop quality as somebody lets the messages build for a few minutes and then answer with their own string or just leaves and comes back. People learned not to expect real time responses to IMs because IMs were not the same as a phone conversation. Similar conventions will arise for read notifications.

...since when did being the one to stop talking make anyone 'the bad guy' outside of, I dunno, grade school?

Oh common. Everyone knows "that" guy/girl who wants to talk to you but you really just don't give a crap what they have to say. Read receipts just make it that much harder/less socially convenient to ignore them. Sure you can be a dick to just tell them to screw off, but it is putting the onerous on YOU when it's other people who are attempting to initiate the conversion in the first place.

Respectfully communicating to a person that you do not wish to communicate at a particular time or ever again does not a dick make. Everyone reserves the right to communicate with whom and when they please.

I am and always will be an emotional person but when I read pieces like this, I get the feeling that people today have the thinnest skin in the history of human beings. It's almost like people are searching for things to become offended about.

Personally, I don't care mind say, read receipts on iMessage, but I do explicitly throw away and ignore e-mail receipts just to mess with them.

It is nice that Apple gives us the option to have them on or off.

I don't expect the people I send messages to to be around their devices all day, so they don't really mean much to me. I like knowing that the other person has theoretically read my iMessage but since you can also read short messages in the Notification Center, no read receipt doesn't necessarily mean unread.

I also treat iMessage as different from IMs in that I don't expect any replies within any particular amount of time, nor do I expect greetings or goodbyes.

I'm a pioneer Luddite in this field. I'll get back to you when I get back to you, and pestering me, acting like a fuckwit, or severely over worrying about it will just increase my time of response and quite possibly a verbal smacking in person for being a damned idiot.

I've been a specialist in messaging for over 15 years. Design, implementation and administration of email systems and IM systems, in hundreds of companies. From 5 people to 100,000+ people.(And these days I'm not a consultant anymore, so I apologise for the phrasing used there.)

I'm not going to say flat out that you're wrong. The next generation will be more plastic, and more willing to create the conventions you're thinking of.

But the current and older generations of workers? The ones that started working with email systems in their late teens or later?

In my professional opinion, based upon many observations, I'd say:Not a ****ing hope, buddyNot a ****ing hope.

Maybe so (I am a consultant). But it would never go in my favor regardless. If something hits the fan it is all "ok, let's figure this out and work the problem" If I ever pulled the "I sent you that and here is the read receipt" I'd probably be given a curt "You're right" then never see a scrap of work again. Higher ups may be able to leverage something if there is enough of a trend. But being a consultant is all about remebering the Golden Rule and fixing things. Even when they are certifiably not your fault.

You misunderstand me. I totally agree with you that you never bring up when it's the client's fault (with obvious exception), but you absolutely use them when you deliver project statuses that say the project is behind to demonstrate that the team is waiting on the client, and not the other way around. That's just good project management. If you can't hold people accountable for project delays during the project, it's your fault at the end, no matter who delayed the project during. It's also good if they ever start pushing back on bills and hours justification.

But yes, I agree in general you shouldn't be wielding read receipts at your client all the time.

I've been a specialist in messaging for over 15 years. Design, implementation and administration of email systems and IM systems, in hundreds of companies. From 5 people to 100,000+ people.(And these days I'm not a consultant anymore, so I apologise for the phrasing used there.)

I'm not going to say flat out that you're wrong. The next generation will be more plastic, and more willing to create the conventions you're thinking of.

But the current and older generations of workers? The ones that started working with email systems in their late teens or later?

In my professional opinion, based upon many observations, I'd say:Not a ****ing hope, buddyNot a ****ing hope.

These conventions will be for the next generation only.

A manager, who predates Exchange/Outlook in this org (in other words, we implemented Exchange/Outlook in year 2000 and he's been using them from day one and every day since) came to me just yesterday and asked "how do I open the global address book". I told him to look in there to make sure the OAB has updated, and he came back with how do I open the address book? Boggles. How does he function? Yeah older people have core competency issues when it comes to technology. It requires a certain level of abstract thinking. To assume they may come up with some sort of common set of conventions when they can't even learn how to use the damn thing? Nope. Not going to happen.